Let's Analyze (The Town of) ZZT!

NOTE: I HATE A LOT OF YOUR ZZT GAMES, SO WATCH OUT!

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Let's Analyze (The Town of) ZZT!

Post by Dr. Dos »

Background

My inspiration for this project comes from Simply Simon's Let's Play Mega Man series of well, Let's Plays. He took a more analytical look at the series and how it develops over time compared to most LPs which just show off how to beat the robot masters with just the buster or whatever.

At some point in the thread somebody linked a similar project, though in screenshots known as "A Critical Look At Mega Man Stages" which has been going on for quite some time now covering everything as well.

This got me inspired (months ago) to try something similar with ZZT games. See what they did, try to deduce why, and figure out if it was a good or bad design decision in the end. I'll be starting with Town of ZZT by virtue of being the first game.

Updates

I do not know how much I will play. I'm sure I can force my way through Town, and if I and others remain interested take a look at the other original worlds or any other games really. For Town each update will be retrieving one purple key and unlocking its door. Other games should I play through them may have different stopping points.

The Setup

Unfortunately, in the year 2012 ZZT is much more difficult to run. I have opted to play in Dosbox rather than using Lyon for accuracy's sake (though Lyon from what I've seen is quite capable). Originally I began playing with a PS2 controller and joy2key to map buttons to keys. Alas Dosbox doesn't seem to like this and I found myself unable to shoot. So instead I'm doing the standard keyboard controls. As a child I used to use my left hand on right shift to shoot though these days the left shift seems more natural for this.

The downside of running in Dosbox is its known issue with it not cooperating with ZZT's input detection. There's a clear lag between holding a key and moving and holding one direction then switching to another causes a full stop. This does put me at a disadvantage as you are generally fairly maneuverable running ZZT natively.

The Audience

Though I am posting this on z2 first and foremost. It's pretty much dead. These entries will also be crossposted to Video Game Tales a livejournal community where there's a slightly larger audience. I will generally try to explain things to new viewers so they can have a better understanding.

With all that stated, Let's Begin Analyzing ZZT!

Town of ZZT

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Before we can even begin to choose our world we are greeted with the standard options which ZZT will ask us time and time again. Our input, and our monitor type. Mouse controls are very unwieldy for a tile based game, and in 1991 I believe joysticks were generally flight sticks which don't strike me as much better. In 1991 I'm sure somebody was stuck with an amber monitor forced to play nothing but ASCII games, but choosing monochrome graphics didn't seem to help much. Keys all appear white which strikes me as a bit cruel.

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Next we are greeted with a reminder telling us not to copy that floppy. Only Town, Demo, and Tour were shareware and could be provided to others. For reference, the order form for the game says that registration is $12.95. Registering gave you a registered copy of ZZT, a hint sheet, and Caves of ZZT. Surprisingly, The Dungeons of ZZT and Underground City of ZZT were not included by default each costing $6 or $10 for both, or $12 for both plus Best of ZZT. That's rather pricy if you ask me. Also yuck, giving out Caves as the bonus is probably a good way to ensure people don't dare pay for City or Dungeons.

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Finally loading the actual game we're greeting with our title screen. All things considered it does a nice job giving you an idea of what you'll find. The others box contains four objects which do nothing, and a bear (which also does nothing). Whether the ruffian object was made an object so it wouldn't move is a likely possibility. The green snake and yellow nameless object are not actually found in the game. They may be cut content either for Town or for ZZT in general as snakes are in Super ZZT and in the editor the unprogrammed dragon pup enemy uses a phi symbol.

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Finally we get to the actual game. Town gives us the opportunity to explore however we like. Most ZZT games later on would eschew this nonlinear gameplay as stories become more prevalent. The open world is a plus as this gives the player the chance to try something else if they find something too difficult in their first encounter.

As far as choices in ZZT go, this is a massive amount. There are six immediately accessible paths and at first glance a seventh opens up when we get our first purple key. The scroll (an object so you can reread if needed) gives you all the plot you're going to get: Find the five purple keys to get into the palace. Health and how to save are also covered.

A new player may choose any of these directions to go. For the sake of easily managed updates I'll be heading into the armory first, and then going east. East was chosen by asking somebody with zero context which path to take.

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The Armory, is likely a logical first destination when the player sees they have zero ammo to start. The vendor sells 3 ammo or one torch for a gem. He also offers "advice" which Tim Sweeney believed meant "Stairway to Heaven lyrics". To his credit, every time I hear that quoted verse I think of ZZT. I doubt I'm the only one as somebody even made a game in tribute to Sweeney known as The Forests Will Echo With Laughter.

In addition to a shop, we also get our first puzzle. There's lots of supplies in storage and the key is in plain sight. Purple conveyors are introduced to the player here as they fruitlessly try to rush in. Meanwhile the guardian paces back and forth keeping watch over the key. The red object rings the doorbell causing the guardian to move towards it and and answer it.

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The traditional solution to this puzzle is to ring the doorbell when the guardian is above the key (as in the screenshot) causing him to push it into the conveyors and outside to you. There is in fact one alternate solution that's much more effort but still likely intentional.

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A player aware of boulders can push them and essentially jam the conveyors, allowing the player to run in and grab the key. Ther guardian has no reaction to this and can't be interacted with in any way other than the doorbell where he will call you a cretin.

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This is probably my favorite emoticon I added to z2. 1991's equivalent of SA's :getout: frog.

There is a third solution to the puzzle, though it is more of an exploit in ZZT's behavior than an intended method to complete it. When you pause the game, you can move and sometimes pause again before any other object can react. By mashing the up arrow and the pause key it's possible to brute force your way in. This "pause motion" behavior as I've dubbed it can exploit a lot of things in ZZT by allowing the player to move far more than a single step per cycle. A more comical version of this can be done by choosing mouse input and holding down the pause key while moving the mouse. This lets you practically stop time to the point where running into your own bullets is trivial.

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Moving on, my randomly asked person chose east so I set off in that direction. Quite possibly the laziest depiction of a cave ever made is seen here. While I myself know that this is an optional area with little purpose, a new player with the free torches given here would likely check it out right away.

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Where they would be greeted with this! Darkness in ZZT is rather dark before you light a torch. Lighting a torch creates a small round area of light around you. In general darkness makes navigation and combat much less fun. For the sake of the audience I also took screenshots of dark boards with the -dark cheat on.

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In ZZT cheats are entered by pressing ? and then typing them in. Most cheats just give you items such as "ammo", "gems", "torches", and "health". -dark however is a bit more special as it's actually two cheats. The first, obviously, is to remove the darkness property from the board. However, in addition zzt supports arbitrarily setting and clearing of flags with ?+flag and ?-flag. While most cheating cannot easily be stopped by the author of a game, the fact that -dark also clears the flag dark makes it very easy to detect if a player turned on the lights.

Most games, mercifully would do nothing. Some would have little messages in pockets of the room normally always invisible complaining that you cheated. A select few would instead immediately kill the player if they did this. Zenith Nadir, is one such jerk.

Darkness is typically very very poorly used. For this series I will be playing these boards in darkness with torches as intended. Realistically, the reason darkness is so poorly done is simply torch management. As you can see, the T key lights a torch. This means having one hand leave the shift key to light one when one goes out. In combat situations it is very easy to lose considerable health because of this. It's actually why I tried setting up a custom joystick control scheme.

Now that we can actually see the room, it's fairly empty and safe. Purple ruffians defend a small pocket of ammo and gems, and a centipede runs about in the opposite corner. Bears, which only move when in close enough proximity to the player are up top and it's possible to not even notice them if you hug the walls.

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This second room of the cave is also dark. You can see my torch meter on the sidebar showing my torch is about to run out. The room is a dead end, and if you have a purple key you can receive an immediate replacement, some gems, and an ad for Caves of ZZT. The torch's radius is not large enough to let you see that you'll get a new purple key and it is possible somebody would be paranoid of the game entering an unwinnable state if they use their key for the palace on this door. The door could just as easily not have been there saving players a second trip if they did dare use a key just to get a few gems.

All in all the cave is only useful as an introduction to dark rooms. The upper yellow area comes into play later and I will cover it then.

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Heading out of the cave and farther to the east we get another safe introduction to things. The Forest, is covered in forest tiles, which block enemy movement, though when a player steps onto such a tile, the tile is removed. This room also introduces us to energizers, ZZT's invulnerability powerup, and pushers, which constantly try to move in the direction they point, crushing gems or enemies in their paths but not harming the player. Energizers last long enough that the player can likely clear out all the enemies other than the avoidable ruffians with the three provided and not have to fire a single shot. At the very least they can get the cyan key and get some ammo if they didn't acquire any elsewhere yet.

The only other thing of note to the behavior of energizers is that enemies will flee from the player when he is invulnerable. This also applies to objects using the #go seek or /seek command.

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(This screenshot was missing, hence the editor sidebar)

Moving south takes us to the rest of the forest where we get to play around with what can be done with the terain and also are introduced to duplicators. Those small dots you see by each of the enemy types will slowly produce more enemies. The player needs to get past them, but has the luxury of being able to make narrow paths in the forest to flush the enemies into where they can be safely defeated.

Duplicators are oddly buggy in ZZT. If the player were to stand in the tile where duplicated enemies would spawn, instead the original enemy would be destroyed and the player would take damage, thus ending the possibility of more enemies at the cost of 10 health. One could argue this is a deliberate feature, however in games where there are programmed objects being duplicated, nothing happens to the player or the original, but the duplicator will never produce additional copies even if the tile is clear the next time it would try.

The small clearing with the tree offers the player the wise advice to invest in leaves. The white parentheses and carat are transporters, these will offer the player a quick escape on the way out rather than having to fight more enemies. That's all the new stuff.

Artistically, this is a nice board. By default (I guess it's a good thing we have an editor screenshot here), ZZT only supports seven bright colors. Some objects are always one color, while others can be customized. The game does have 16 colors in total, dark variations of the default seven colors, plus two shades of gray. Later on, others would discover ways to get access to all these colors, but that's a story for another time.

In these days, using torches to represent trees was a fairly common thing and it makes a nice backdrop compared to more bright green or some other solid background.

One last thing to mention about all these boards on the eastern path, is that they all limit you to having one bullet on screen at a time. This makes accuracy important and being able to make narrow paths in the forest to ensure a hit makes things easier on the player. The main combat boards here also transport the player back to the last entrance to the room they used when they take damage, again encouraging safe strategies.

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The House Of Blues is our second puzzle. The blue jazz man will sing a song and play a tune over the pc speaker. The player then has to replicate each line of music in the same order on the music notes. Upon doing so the jazz man moves allowing the player to head east. It's another safe puzzle as playing the wrong notes simply resets it. When you play a correct note, its appearance also changes, so once the first note is found the puzzle only gets easier.

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The mixer is where we'll be getting our first purple key, as so prominently displayed. This screenshot wasn't taken immediately on entering the board. Normally there are a few more lions within the mixer. It's rather tedious. Getting hit returns you to the entrance and you can only carry one of each color key so you'll spend a good amount of time trying to shoot the lions and gather and return each key. After making your way through the player can time their trip through the transporters to make sure the centipedes aren't near, and ideally keeping them in narrow corridors where they can't escape the player's bullets. Once you acquire the key you are all set to backtrack to the town's main hub again. The transporter network could've been extended to take you all the way back to town, but instead you'll have to do some walking on likely empty boards. It could have been avoided really. Although, the walk does give the player a chance to get their 8 gems from the cave if they chose.

And that's the end of that!
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Re: Let's Analyze (The Town of) ZZT!

Post by Aplsos »

zzt
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Re: Let's Analyze (The Town of) ZZT!

Post by Quantum P. »

I like the analytic approach.
Dr. Dos wrote:The downside of running in Dosbox is its known issue with it not cooperating with ZZT's input detection. There's a clear lag between holding a key and moving and holding one direction then switching to another causes a full stop. This does put me at a disadvantage as you are generally fairly maneuverable running ZZT natively.
When I was playing on a 486 (DOS, Windows 3.1), I remember there being a lag between holding a key and the player responding. The player would take a step, pause for the key repeat delay, then run in the pressed direction.

I don't remember exactly what happened when switching directions. I want to say that the player also stopped, but I'm not sure.
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Re: Let's Analyze (The Town of) ZZT!

Post by Commodore »

I've always felt like when "dashing" in zzt, a few rapid directional taps have always been necessary (especially when changing direction) to overcome the lag on the key repeat. Same with shooting.

Has anyone actually tried a joystick with zzt?
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Re: Let's Analyze (The Town of) ZZT!

Post by Saxxon »

Quantum P. wrote:I like the analytic approach.
Dr. Dos wrote:The downside of running in Dosbox is its known issue with it not cooperating with ZZT's input detection. There's a clear lag between holding a key and moving and holding one direction then switching to another causes a full stop. This does put me at a disadvantage as you are generally fairly maneuverable running ZZT natively.
When I was playing on a 486 (DOS, Windows 3.1), I remember there being a lag between holding a key and the player responding. The player would take a step, pause for the key repeat delay, then run in the pressed direction.

I don't remember exactly what happened when switching directions. I want to say that the player also stopped, but I'm not sure.
Based on the code of 3.2, if you held down a key and pressed another direction, it would cancel the movement in the current direction (multiple presses of the same key are discarded from the keyboard buffer). It would also move one square in the new direction, pause for a bit, then continue in the new direction. Pressing two directions at the same time would execute one, then the other.
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Re: Let's Analyze (The Town of) ZZT!

Post by Dr. Dos »

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Back at the hub the player opens their first purple door and immediately meets with the second. For this update I'll be going south.

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South has always been the first direction I traveled in, getting plenty of ammo right away. Since they player could be entering any direction as their first, there isn't much difficulty progression in Town. Again we see mostly narrow corridors where we can safely shoot without missing. As with other action board, only one bullet can be on screen. If the player is unaware only one key can be held at a time, they'll likely learn it here. The enemies are also far enough away from the entrance that the player won't be ambushed without being ready.

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The guard station shows that I was wrong, the mysterious yellow object is here, just in green. Talking to the prison guard lets the player inside, but also shuts the gates behind them committing them to the southern path unlike the east, where they were free to give up and change direction.

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I quite like the prison board, and recall very early on making my own boards similar in style to it, with blink walls and spinning guns. The time limit on the board is fairly tight, enough that the player should hurry, but not so much so that they have to play perfectly. Getting hit by an enemy resets the timer and player's position as well where hopefully the player will have made enough progress that they can move faster on their next attempt.

Despite the gems saying "Time", they don't give you additional time. Though they do give enough to make up for getting hit once. Another "puzzle" has the player positioning boulders to safely cross the narrow path of the final guns.

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The goal of our run through the prison is to set the ZZT Bandit free, which leads me to wonder just who is the player anyway that he's breaking convicted felons out of prison. Regardless, as a reward the bandit tells us of a secret passage in the armory that will give us the bank vault's combination.

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Leaving the prison the player is given two paths, heading right takes them here, to the second purple key seen. In contrast to the prison, I hate this board. Conceptually it is great. The player has to use the bombs to blast away the wall, while making sure not to hit the objects which will begin throwing stars which home in on the player at him, slowly, and constantly.

Unfortunately, the puzzle falls quite flat due to a design flaw. Bombs can be pushed by things, and stars can push things. It is very easy to have bombs moved away from their position. In addition, stars linger for quite some time, making it essentially impossible to solve the puzzle once a handful have been spawned. It is also impossible to solve without bombing at least one of the star generators, which spawn the first star after 3 seconds, and then every 8 seconds afterwards.

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The left path contains a sliding puzzle. This one is simple, and forgiving in that you can undo a bad push as long as you don't do so to the point where the sliders touch the side walls. It also gets easier as you go along as more sliders are replaced with boulders.

A green door whose key is acquired in the next room is also shown here. It is possible to skip this next room if you get the green key to the armory and never use it there. Whether this is intentional or just a coincidence (after all, there was a 1 in 6 chance of it happening) is unknown.

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The solved puzzle looks something like this. Reader solutions may be different than pictured above.

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The final board of the southern path is another action sequence. This room is much more challenging than the ones seen so far. The bears will introduce the mechanic of tearing down breakable walls (and destroying themselves), but only if the player is patient enough to let them get that close. The room is significantly wider and open. No more luring enemies into narrow paths. The key's positioning would've been a bit nicer if it was one more to the south. I got shot by tigers that were supposed to be at the end that moved towards the room's entrance this way.

The tigers and their strange ZZT ability to shoot bullets are also first seen here. The breakable walls of the later areas are likely to be worn away a good amount by the time the player reaches them so you do have to be quick about things. Limited to one shot at a time, they are also heavily outgunned.

With the green key acquired, the player may return to the prison and shoot the pusher object causing the one on the right to resume pushing the sliders westward. This forces the player to go the long way around rahter than just having the sliders disappear.

Two keys down I am now dangerously low on health. Fortunately the next two keys will involve zero combat whatsoever. I would like to complain that the one thing you can't buy from the vendor, is health.
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Re: Let's Analyze (The Town of) ZZT!

Post by Quantum P. »

Last picture should probably be zzt_027.png.
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Re: Let's Analyze (The Town of) ZZT!

Post by Commodore »

Dragons were my favorite part...I'm eagerly awaiting that, though it comes on the heels of the invisible maze.

I like the bombing/stars part, but generally agree with your assessment, though if the generators were far enough apart to avoid being exposed when bombed, the puzzle would be sort of obvious given the small dimensions of the board.
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Re: Let's Analyze (The Town of) ZZT!

Post by Saxxon »

That star generator board is absolutely treacherous.
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Re: Let's Analyze (The Town of) ZZT!

Post by Quantum P. »

Out of curiosity, I copied-and-pasted a bomb explosion outline all over the bombs-and-stars room. This was the result:
bombs.png
bombs.png (3.75 KiB) Viewed 9603 times
All the blue-tinted breakables can be cleared without setting off any star-throwers. This is assuming unlimited bombs and the skill of perfect bomb positioning. The star-throwers only activate on being :bombed; you can completely uncover one (like the one in the lower-left corner) without activating it.

A breakable is tinted yellow if it is possible to clear it and set off exactly one star-thrower. It is not possible to clear all of the yellow tiles this way; what I am saying is if you pick a single yellow tile, I can show you a path to that tile that only activates one star-thrower.

So in order to get the key, you must suffer some stars (confirmation of what Dr. Dos already said). However, it is possible to set off only one of the objects.

---

To my mind, the best strategy is to first clear the right-hand side as safely as possible. Then detonate one bomb next to the top-right star-thrower, clearing a path to the key.

I don't think too many stars would accumulate, because you've still got all the breakable walls in the center; if you get hit, you return to the start, the stars head southwest, and the stars get eliminated immediately.

You could get the bombs closer to the right-hand side by using an active bomb to push the rest of the bombs, but that might be risky.
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Re: Let's Analyze (The Town of) ZZT!

Post by Dr. Dos »

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This time, we head west to one of my favorite rooms. The three lakes forces the player to navigate a ping-pong path without getting shot by any of the spinning guns. A small shield at the start allows safety if the player should give up, and have to return again later, preventing them from entering the board and immediately getting hit by an old bullet.

Ping-pong paths are generally considered to be a poor design choice, and they are, but in this case the path is meaningful, not just lengthening travel time. The player will also usually have an easier time returning as now they can run with the bullets rather than into them.

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And then we get to the Rube Board. A lot of people find this to be a difficult puzzle, and if you are a child I will forgive you for it. The challenge with this board is the lack of guidance and the false "three tries" hint.

If the player begins by rushing into the main area, they will immediately be unable to complete the puzzle. As the top horizontal slider moves east, the long vertical chain will move south, moving the ns slider and causing the bottom horizontal pusher to block the path. From this, we can deduce that we have to complete the left area of the puzzle first.

Going through the left path we encounter a trap right away. If we push the slider south two times, we will have no exit route and be stuck. Pushing it once and moving west with the pusher will let us safely get in.

The second pusher however, is safe, riding it across will leave us with a boulder we can push to escape later.

In the last section, a small pile of sliders exists, it's much more of a trap than it appears. Though, some simple untangling allows us to push a slider blocking the long vertical pusher's path. This ensures us we won't block off the breakable walls.

Now we exit slowly, pushing the boulder up without pushing it so much as to block us in like we could have with the very first slider. With that complete it's time to solve the rest of the puzzle.

The previous parts of the puzzle often resulting in being trapped may lead players to believe that they should push the bomb now, but this will not work. The room is designed to prevent it, as those sliders extending into the main path will prevent you from getting the bomb any father south.

Going in without the bomb, leaves us with 2 "tries", we can exit once, and enter once more. Other than that though, there is just one section left we can interact with, the set of sliders with no pusher. Pushing it once to line up the boulders at first seems promising, as the horizontal sliders blocking the bomb path moves away, however after a few cycles, another boulder lines up, releasing another pusher which traps us again.

The solution is to push once so that the first slider gets out of our way, and then push again, prevening ourselves from being locked. Once this has been done, we can exit with the second boulder, and push the bomb and third boulder all the way to victory.

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For completing Town's most fiendish puzzle we are rewarded with our third purple key and 1000 bonus points.

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The third door has ruffians behind it, and they tend to position themselves in the doorway making it very risky to just open the door. I actually went around to the rest of the board and tried to flush them into a corner so that I could rush in without immediately being hit.

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Back in the armory we can now search for the secret passage behind the boulders that the ZZT bandit warned us about. Sure enough behind the top right set there is a hidden path...

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...to the House of Blues? There's no particular reason for this, other than possibly to serve as a hint of what's to come if the player hasn't gone east from the town hub yet. You can actually solve the puzzle from here, though there's no real benefit.

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Instead the ZZT Bandit was telling us of the secret path behind the western boulders instead. Here the player gets an introduction to invisble walls.

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Touching an invisibl;e wall causes it to appear permanently. It also plays an annoying sound effect. I'll comment more on invisible walls when we encounter some more later. For now, we have our password, 40354. With it, it's time to rob a bank.

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The bank is dark, solely to hide the circuitry. I don't like the "Push" button being at the very beginning. A new player will see "Push" before anything about a bank combination and likely will push it, making them fail at opening the vault and forced to start over. There's also no game over for putting in the wrong combination, allowing the player to get 4 purple keys for nothing. It's not even mentioned anywhere that the vault contains the last purple key (though it's easy enough to deduce).

The blue pusher is actually an object that after it moves the first time, waits and checks to see if it can move again. If so it displays a message telling you the vault is open. If not, it tells you it's now closed. I bring this up solely because it also has commented out #play commands (which are a tad grating). I don't blame Sweeney for getting rid of this.

#play hfcdefcdefcdefcde

If opened:
#play q+fe+chf

If closed:
#play hfc

Opening the vault gives the player the fourth purple key and 20 gems, which more importantly means 20 much needed health.

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Opening the fourth purple door meanwhile gives the player a rather colorful new room.
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Re: Let's Analyze (The Town of) ZZT!

Post by Quantum P. »

Dr. Dos wrote:we have our password, 40354.
...but that's not the password.
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Re: Let's Analyze (The Town of) ZZT!

Post by Dr. Dos »

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Here it is, the thrilling conclusion to Town of ZZT. This time we head northward, the final unexplored area.

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This is a fun room that's essentially an easier jail. No time limit to worry about, just a fun path of timing your movements to get through the blink walls. No doubt some people have tried running immediately to the key only to get zapped.

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The Castle of Lots 'n Lots of Evil is our final destination. This board is pretty comic from a contemporary viewpoint. Thank you for telling us what the moat and river are!

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The bridge keeper is revealed to be a troll who refuses to let us cross without a bribe of 10 gems. For reference, there are three in the main hub and nine in the armory's stock room. Seven in the cave. Six in the forest. Four in the second part of the forest. Fifteen in the prison. Twenty in the bank, and eight more in the back of the cave. Items in the shop all cost one gem and most gems aren't placed in a way where they're likely to accidentally be destroyed. I can't imagine anybody exhausting all the gems and being unable to proceed.

Were it not for the gems in the armory, the player would have to engage in combat in some form before venturing into the castle. The Mega Man critique that inspired all this points out that in those games it's difficult to have much of a difficulty curve because any stage can be the first or last, and the same can be said of Town provided you can solve the armory puzzle. The castle is clearly intended to be the most difficult path as the player will soon see.

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Of course the purple key is right outside, so no doubt a player will try to leave immediately, but the troll won't hear it. Fortunately for those who aren't fans of the castle (me), there is a way around this.

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You'll notice the player isn't visible here! If you pause next to the troll and touch him, the game doesn't unpause. His code chooses which message to display based on being blocked to the west or not. As he's not blocked west, you must be entering the castle! Pay the bribe a second time and you're free to skip a large portion of the game. If you're good at mashing the P key and using pause motion it's actually possible to escape and only pay the toll once.

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Unfortunately, I have to play the castle, which continues to look very amateurish. Make sure to bring torches, it's very dark in the labyrinth.

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This room is dark by default. In fact, assume every board in the castle is unless I state otherwise. Torches won't reveal the white key that's our goal so the player has no really idea where they're going. I chose south.

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The spinning guns are a nasty trap if the player isn't careful, though they can be avoided entirely.

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Heading south once more takes us to this lit room. It's reasonable to believe this is a boss chamber. An astute player will notice that this must mean you'll have to head east at some point to get here and exit.

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South of the dragons are the more fearsome tigers. While previous action rooms have limited the player to one shot on the screen the castle is spammable, so if the player has stockpiled plenty of ammo they are much safer. The tigers in the bottom right are a cruel trap. It is very difficult to pick up that second gem without immediately getting hit, and in general just isn't worthwhile.

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Sure enough, heading east is where we need to go, but without the key there's no progress.

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Heading west takes the player here where they can get some easy supplies. There are two exits north and both need to be taken.

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The western northern path brings the player to The Room of Extreme Annoyance. Thankfully it is lit.

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And now you know why it's annoying. The maze's corridors are fairly wide, but any invisible maze in ZZT is tedium. Later games make it so revealing a wall would flash the entire maze which made them far more bearable, but still rather poor in design. It is nearly impossible to die in this one so the only challenge is a test of your patience. After completing the left half of the maze, the player has to leave and enter from the right side to complete it. This gives the player a large chunk of health and in my case was sorely needed.

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Blue key in hand the player is now free to fight the six dragons. Their behavior is fairly basic, but they are more complex than other objects we've seen which hardly do anything beyond moving and speaking. The dragons will move about slowly, sometimes shooting in the player's direction. They are immune to bullets and though you are never told this, the sheer abundance of bombs should tip anybody off. There are plenty of spare bombs in case of any misses, and it is possible to defeat more than one with a single bomb as they often clump together. Town teaches us that a dragon caught in an explosion is vaporized immediately.

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Heading east takes the player back to the main hub, but now able to access the rest. This is the end of the castle's labyrinth. I can't speak very fondly of the transporters in a dark room. It's too easy to get ambushed and have zero control over it. Fortunately with the white key to the throne room, the exit is almost upon us.

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The throne room is the player's final puzzle. The blink walls make the passage to the scepter one way, and so the player must get in from the other side.

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Touching the statue causes the walls to shift between two different places.

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Pushing the sliders into place like this is NOT the correct solution. I only kept this screenshot to show that there are even more invisible walls and this time they are 100% meaningless. Nothing but a waste of the player's time. I couldn't actually recall the solution to this puzzle so I only pushed those sliders out halfway so that I could put them back a bit if needed.

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Unfotunately the wall objects do not handle this well and instead slam too far to the south forcing me to restart and realize the proper solution.

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Well, first actually there's this little trick. Touch the wall here and immediately hold down.

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You'll be able to make it through this gap before being pushed away. It doesn't break the puzzle, just saves some time.

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The actual solution is to open the purple doors and let the pusher get into position. Then you can shift the walls and move that last slider so that the passage is blocked open.

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Now free to take the scepter, the player receives a bonus and can get that last purple key and get out of this awful castle forever. It's time to enter the palace!

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Opening the fifth and final (well, okay you can see a sixth there) door gives us a grand animation of each V shaped set of walls disappearing and some exciting music playing. The yellow object moves aside and the player may enter the palace finally.

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Opening this door causes the wall to extend, there's no going back now.

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To the east is an ampersand. It gives you some points and makes you wonder what an ampersand you pick up would actually be. The object for this is named Necklace, which is far more fitting.

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Heading west gives us a brief detour to admire our handywork in the rube board.

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And leads us to the cave we began with. This room is dark and the final challenge. The conveyors force the player to ride a pusher into the tiger den. With only 13 health this is essentially suicide. If your health is low this would be the final puzzle. Push the first slider out of the way and then get out of the way yourself. The pusher will move the boulders out of the way and you can safely shoot through a narrow chokepoint. Once safe ride another pusher and get that sixth purple key.

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The player is rewarded with congratulations and several compliments on their abilities before ultimately being told to go away. The ZZT player himself has never been very popular with the residents really.

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And with that, Town of ZZT is completed!

Closing Thoughts

As an introduction to ZZT Town does an overall great job. Each path contains a mixture of action boards and puzzle boards, showing a good amount of variety even without many objects that would become a staple of later ZZT games. The non-linearity in which path is taken for the most part allows the player to give up and try elsewhere if they are stuck, or even if they start over, save the biggest challenges for last. Over twenty years later, you can still load up Town and have fun with it which is honestly more than can be said for most ZZT games.

Financially of course the game was a success, Epic is still around today and began with something this simplistic. I can definitely see somebody playing through Town and wanting more. Had it not become freeware by the time I discovered it I would've bugged my parents to let me order it for sure.

Programming-wise it's a bit sparse, objects serve more as helpers for effects than as complex constructions. A new programmer wouldn't learn very much from Town, hampered additionally by the lock preventing editing by default.

As somebody whose prime ZZT days were in the late 90s Town has almost always felt archaic. It doesn't feel like what I imagine when I think of ZZT games. It's much more focused on the individual room than the overall game. Community made ZZT games very quickly got away from this, and even the earliest games seem to be more story driven. I can't imagine a community that made games more like Town having lasted nearly as long.

So now the question is what next? I'd probably be willing to do another one of these. Dungeons is the obvious choice being the sequel, but if there's interest in something else as long as it isn't too long I'd be willing to give it a try.
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Apologies for the old post you may have just read.
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Schroedingers Cat
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Re: Let's Analyze (The Town of) ZZT!

Post by Schroedingers Cat »

Very nice.

I would suggest Teen Priest, or On the Wire, if you haven't yet decided which game to do next.

I look forward to your next installment.
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Commodore
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Re: Let's Analyze (The Town of) ZZT!

Post by Commodore »

Well done. You were running about with very little health, did you die at all? Neat trick with the troll. There are lot of pictures of that throne room. I would have liked to have seen a shot of the invisible maze solved.

If you do another you should do your (ex?)favorite, Wartorn, since you stressed that later games leaned more on story.
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